When shareholders of media conglomerate Viacom show up for their annual meeting tomorrow, they'll face the wrath of Catholic League President Dr. William Donahue over a shocking Showtime episode that slandered the late Mother Teresa and her order of nuns in the vilest of terms.

According to Donahue, who plans a press conference in front of the hotel in New York City where the Viacom meeting is being held, an episode of Showtime's Penn and Teller show "Holier Than Thou was a "Nazi-like assault on Catholicism, and on the person the show calls "Mother F***ing Teresa. Showtime is owned by Viacom.

Stormed Donahue, "In the 12 years that I have been president of the Catholic League, I have never witnessed a more vicious attack on Catholicism than what appeared this week on the Showtime program, Penn and Teller. The episode, Holier Than Thou, was a frontal assault on Mother Teresa and her order of nuns, Missionaries of Charity (as well as Gandhi and the Dali Lama).

"Like most Americans, I like parodies and have no problem, per se, with irreverent humor. But when humor becomes insult, that is a different story. And that is what happens here: comedy quickly morphs to vitriol. Indeed, as the show progresses, the level of anger becomes palpable and the degree of distortion becomes mindboggling. This is no comedyit is Nazi propaganda right out of the Leni Riefenstahl school of filmmaking.

"The Mother Teresa that the world has come to love and revere is made to look like a cruel, exploitative, self-serving nun who ripped off the poor. We are told that Mother Teresa intentionally let the poor suffer, providing neither beds nor bathroom facilities. She had the f***ing coin and pissed it away on nunneries, says Penn. As for the nuns who worked with Mother Teresa, they are referred to as f***ing c***s.

"It does not bother me when they call me Catholic Boy on the show (though the term Jew Boy would never cross their lips), nor does it concern me when they talk about f**ers like Bill Donohue [who] only see good in her. But when they mock the Catholic Churchs teaching on the meaning of suffering, and when they say of the poor that They had to suffer so that Mother F***ing Teresa could be enlightened, then they are behaving like monsters.

"We will mail a tape of select portions of this broadcast to many interested parties, including the bishops. And we will hold a press conference tomorrow outside the hotel where Viacom is holding its annual stockholders meeting. They havent heard the end of this yet.

Donohue, who will be joined by some Catholic League staff members, said he will answer any questions following a few remarks. He promised that copies the Catholic League news release on this subject, "Mother F***ing TeresaCourtesy of Viacom, will be distributed to Viacom shareholders as they enter the hotel.

The show where they went to a fancy LA resturant, made up some fake names for bottled water and filled up the bottles all with water from the hose and sold them for outrageous prices was hilarious. They had people taste test all the water and give their opinions as to how brisk and how glacier like it all was. They did a great show on the scam called Feng Shui, they had 3 experts each do re-arrangements of the same house each charging several hundreds of dollars, every one of them did it differently. And they had a guy go to a $150 feng shui hairstylist and his twin go to a $7 barber, same haircut!

ROTFLMAO!!!

Okay, maybe I will rent the DVDs...

But I still say slamming on Mother Theresa is in very poor taste. There is a limit (there must be a limit) to how crude or cruel the culture gets.

I can handle the crap slung at Catholics for our stand on evolution and other things.

Oh no. I suppose you (incorrectly) think the Church is against evolution? You're wrong. You might want to read the Catechism before you profess to be Catholic. Just because a mouse is found in the cookie jar, that doesn't make him a cookie. Just saying, "I'm Catholic too" means zip to me. John Kerry professes to be Catholic. So does Uncle Fat Drunk -- oops, I mean Ted Kennedy.

251
posted on 05/25/2005 10:23:39 PM PDT
by GipperGal
(Yes, Maureen, the Cafeteria is closed! Please step away from the salad bar and join the Unitarians)

Yes you're an atheist so Im sure you adore the show and Penn Gillette's foaming hatred of anyone who thinks differently from him.

It must be cool to be omnipotent and be able to tell whether people are athiests or not, but God hates that crap, its his game, so put down the attitude. As for folks being decived, they still go on the show after two full seasons, even Michael Medved went on and made an ass of himself, and I like and listen to Michael's show. As for their show its OPINION, they say what they want, much like Limbaugh et al. Don't like it? Don't watch it!

I found this on the web. Also looking at photos of him he looks like he has a lot of wax on him. I wonder how much of his body is really "his" any more.

For four months, biochemist Boris Zbarsky and anatomist Vladimir Vorobiov worked night and day to preserve the body so that it looked as it had done in life.

Ever since, Lenin's body has been checked twice a week for deterioration. Every 18 months it is taken to a laboratory beneath its mausoleum to be undressed, examined and immersed in preserving chemicals. Nowadays, Moscow's 'mausoleumists' earn most of their money by preserving the bodies of dead mafia bosses.

Yeah we know you think Christianity is imaginary babbling, but sorry you're great gods Penn and Teller won't ever do a show bashing Scientology or Islam. Theyre not brave, theyre just antagonistic geeks.

A former fan of theirs picked them apart if in this insightful review of Bullsh@t:

(to expose some of the techniques that Penn and Teller use, and I started looking for them in other episodes, even those episodes with which I wholeheartedly agreed (in other words, all of them).

found something pretty standard in all their arguments.

For their opponent, they usually find the absolute most extreme camp they can find, a camp that probably represents 10% of the other side of the argument, and they use that as the face of the enemy.

example, in their episode on eating and feeding the world, whom did they choose as the antagonist? Greenpeace and a group of hippie-freakshows who only eat raw foods.

Of course we're going to disagree with these idiots, therefore agreeing with Penn and Teller. We leave the show thinking that any and all genetically-altered foods should be dumped into the 3rd World, bar none.

What they don't show you are the extremely intelligent, forward thinking scientists who recognize the *legitimate* problems with this. Most notably, while genetic engineering may have saved a billion lives it has also done something else very obvious - drastically increased the population.

Therefore, deaths related to overpopulation not associated with starvation - like aids, leprosy, and other illnesses - have drastically increased, inverse to the decrease in deaths from starvation, even exceeding it in some areas. So in trying to do good, we could, in the end, be killing more people.

I'm not saying I totally agree with this point of view, just that it is a legitimate facet of the argument that isn't so easily dismissed with a wave of the hand like the ignorance of the losers that Penn and Teller put on camera.

So be aware as you watch, that there are almost always more viable arguments against their points that they are not showing you

260
posted on 05/25/2005 10:32:48 PM PDT
by Selkie
("There is nothing more galling to angry people than the coolness of those on whom they wish to vent)

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